View full sizeDavid Badders/The OregonianData analysis by the city of Gresham showed that obesity rates in east Multnomah County were overall higher than in the western end of the region.

Streets with more sidewalks. More bike lanes. More community centers and recreational facilities. These were some of the suggestions residents made at a recent community forum held by the city of Gresham.

Last week's forum was one small part of a project the city began last year to do something surprising: help residents stave off obesity by taking another look at its transportation system and land-use policies.

The project, known as Healthy Eating, Active Living, takes on bigger-picture obstacles to a healthy, active lifestyle. It comes at obesity with the approach that people don't just need to be reminded to eat their fruits and vegetables, they're more likely to do so if they have a grocery store stocked with fresh produce nearby.

About 55 percent of Gresham residents are obese or overweight, according to the Multnomah County Health Department. The figure is calculated from the self-reported heights and weights of residents who got a new driver's license or renewed a license in 2008.

Gresham has 28 grocery stores, 12 of which are locally owned small businesses, according to Erin Aigner, the city's geographic information systems analyst. Part of the project will include visits to these stores to see what selection of dairy and produce they have, she said.

The project, dubbed HEAL for short, is part of a larger, countywide program on obesity prevention, said Stacy Humphrey from Gresham's planning department and the project's main staff member. In March of last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded the Multnomah County Health Department $7.5 million for public health programs to prevent obesity. The county health department then spread the funds among three kinds of projects and awarded Gresham $175,000 for HEAL.

One category of programs focuses on promoting a healthy lifestyle in public schools by ensuring access to drinking water and making fewer high-sugar drinks available, for instance. Another will encourage retailers to make healthy food options available on their shelves.

The city planning department's assignment, though, is different. Its approach considers the places people move through every day -- their homes, streets and workplaces -- and asks what role they can play in eating well and staying active.

Transportation and land-use policies "shape the circumstances that people live in and that people move around in," said Heidi Guenin, transportation policy coordinator at Upstream Public Health, an Oregon nonprofit collaborating with the city on the project.

Until the end of the year, Humphrey is working on drafting changes to the city's comprehensive plan, a set of policies that guide land use in Gresham. Her plan is to revise them to bring a health-oriented lens to city planning by surveying similar projects in other U.S. cities and soliciting community input on what residents want to see.

Lavinia Pau, 47, was one of about 10 people at the June 28 forum at the Rockwood branch of Multnomah County Library. Pau, who came to Gresham from Romania in 1992, said she liked that the city was open to residents' opinions but wished more people had attended.

The project is still in its early stages, Humphrey said. Ultimately, its goal is to determine how the city can make obesity prevention a priority when it makes decisions about how to develop land in Gresham -- and write that into a document the city must adhere to.

Humphrey plans to hold another community forum in September to gather more feedback as she works on the project. After a proposal for changes to the comprehensive plan has been drafted, it will go before the city council for approval.